Though this year is unusual, a focus on candidates charitable profiles has been building for some time. Until this year, since 1976 every single Democratic and Republican presidential nominee had released his income-tax returns, allowing the press to poke around in his itemized charitable deductions. Meanwhile, the boundaries between philanthropy and politics have been steadily blurring so that attention directed to one realm is almost necessarily drawn to the other. As wealthy donors have increasingly gravitated toward policy advocacy, theyve found themselves the target of opposition research of the sort that politicians routinely endure. (The Open Society Foundations, funded by George Soros, were recently hacked , likely by the same Russian cyber-goons that hacked Democratic political organizations.) And as substantial private wealth has become a practical prerequisite to holding public officein 2013, the median net worth of a member of Congress passed the one-million-dollar mark the political class and the donor class have converged, as the guest-list of any Davos shindig will attest. Yet its not clear, for all this attention, how much insight the focus on the candidates charity has brought us. The scrutiny applied toward the Clinton Foundation and to the Donald J. Trump Foundation has been almost entirely consumed by charges of corruption and malfeasanceterritory where the political class is comfortable making judgments. But as David Callahan recently pointed out in Inside Philanthropy , despite its focus on the Clinton Foundation, many in the media still dont seem to have much of an idea what it actually does, and there has been little effort expended in appraising its programs. (By contrast, the media seems to have a good excuse for not appraising the work of the Trump Foundation, since it lacks any full-time staff and doesnt seem to do much.) The press has largely ignored the smaller and more traditional Clinton Family Foundation.

The question an ordinary of a diocese or superior of a religious community should meet is: Considering the general interest of the order or the diocese, is it right that I should accept this or that candidate? We are bound to serve God always, and we know that, besides the acts commanded by Him, there are acts which He blesses without making them obligatory, and that among good acts there are some which are better than others. These texts are examined in Vermeer sch, “De vocation religiosa et sacertodali”, taken from the second volume of the same author’s “De religiosis institutes et persons” supple. 3. If this were the case, God, who is infinitely good, would make His will known to every man in a way which could not be misunderstood. A vocation from Latin vocātiō, meaning “a call, summons” 1 is an occupation to which a person is specially drawn or for which she/he is suited, trained, or qualified. A vocation is the work that someone is called to do as a job. Thus, when they teach with the authority of the Church then Christ teaches; when they absolve sins in the sacrament of Penance then Christ forgives; when they offer the Sacrifice of the Mass then Christ offers that Sacrifice; when they love, support and care for God’s people then Christ is present with his people. We derive our knowledge of the will of God, that will which demands our obedience, which approves some of our acts, and esteems some more highly than others, from Holy Scripture and Tradition, by making use of the twofold light which God has bestowed upon us, faith and reason. At the same time, a semi-Quietism in France led people to believe that a man ought to defer his action until he was conscious of a special Divine impulse, a sort of Divine message revealing to him what he ought to do. The difference is how each one does this.

“I think their absence is going to be felt for a long, long time. Holmes County, it’s one of the poorest in the state,” Dew said. “There’s a lot of people here who depended on them for their care and their medicines. It’s going to be rough.” Authorities didn’t release a motive and it wasn’t clear if the nuns’ religious work had anything to do with the slayings. Police Chief John Haynes said officers were canvassing the area and trying to look at video from surveillance cameras in town to see if they spot anything unusual. The Catholic community in Mississippi is relatively small. Of nearly 3 million people, the diocese said there are about 108,000 Catholics. Held had been a member of the School Sisters of St. Francis in Milwaukee for 49 years “and lived her ministry caring for and healing the poor,” a statement from the order said. Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki said whoever killed Held “robbed not only the School Sisters of St. Francis, but also the entire Church of a woman whose life was spent in service.” Merrill had worked in Mississippi for more than 30 years, according to the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth in Kentucky.